2011-11-30

The Greatest Books Post Ever Posted (at least in this room)

Holy crap, people. All the praise I'd heard about this book failed to make one important point:

It contains the most exciting scene in all of literature.

This is not mere hyperbole. I cannot ever remember being so stressed out by a book that my brain was unable to process the words as quickly as my eyes were scrambling over them, desperate to see what would happen next.

And that was about a third into the book! Further emotional climaxes to follow! Including a surprisingly just-right ending.

I don't want to say too much --- I'm glad I had forgotten most of what I read before I began --- but I would like to say that you should not let the idea of a five-year-old narrator make you cringe and you should not let the zeitgeisty buzz put you off and you shouldn't let the awful founding conceit push you away. This book is for all taste levels; it's for fans of thrillers and fine-lit alike. No matter your final opinion (mine is still percolating, though certainly positive overall), you won't regret reading it.

Ma is a heroic, educated young ma. Jack is a complicated child who is a child. And you are the one now clicking my Amazon link or logging onto your library's website to meet them.

David B. is an indie French cartoonist I've heard of but never read. Why oh why did I take so long?

This book contains three stores, "The Veiled Prophet", "The Armored Garden", and "The Drum Who Fell in Love". The last two share a character and the Czech countryside. The first takes place in Baghdad (and environs). All take place a long long time ago. Say, six hundred years.

And the stories feel very much of their time. Not only in their confusing and violent and ambiguous natures (which feel, yes, very medieval), but also in the images. Their flatness and details and the layouts of certain set-piece moments all feel like art of the time. Yes, sure, it's clearly a modern cartoonist, but clearly this cartoonist did his research.

Ugh. No wonder comics had a bad reputation if, twenty years ago, after over a half-century of Superman, these were the best stories every told. I've been working on reading this book to the kids for over three years and they have been as underwhelmed as me.